Mamdani - Who is Really Calling the Shots
Segment #659
Mamdani is a bright young guy that is an exceptional communicator and understands the power of social media. Obama came out of nowhere and Mamdani’s rise is certainly parallel in many respects. He is a perfect figure head and pawn for those that understand quite well how to tear up the U.S. political system. Fear the backers and inner circle advisors, not the puppet. The New York Post has done a series of articles covering Mamdani and who is pulling his strings.
Meet the people who will have Zohran Mamdani’s ear — and who he could owe favors to as NYC mayor
By
Published Nov. 5, 2025, 7:04 p.m. ET
Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani surrounded himself with powerful interest groups and anti-Israel activists who helped him win — and who are now determined to keep him “accountable” and focused on their issues when he takes office in January.
“When you take money for people in politics, if you let them down, they’re going to come get you,” said political strategist Hank Sheinkopf of the incoming administration. “If he doesn’t deliver, they are going to remember.”
Here are the people who will have Mamdani’s ear — and who he could owe favors once sworn in as mayor.
Zohran Mamdani owes a great deal to the powerful groups and activists that backed him in the New York City mayor’s race. Aristide Economopoulos
Linda Sarsour
Palestinian-American activist Linda Sarsour has been described as a mentor and friend to Mamdani. Last month, she was seen in a video telling CAIR conference attendees that she will hold him “accountable” and won’t let him “do whatever the hell he wants when he gets to City Hall.”
Sarsour, a former organizer of the 2017 Women’s March on Washington in 2017 to protest President Trump’s first term, left that organization amid allegations of antisemitism in 2019 — including when she excluded Jewish marchers, saying, “One cannot be a feminist and a Zionist at the same time.”
Radical Palestinian-American activist Linda Sarsour has vowed to make sure Zohran Mamdani is held “accountable” once he takes over the mayor’s office in January. James Keivom
She announced in 2018 that Muslims shouldn’t humanize Israelis because they’re the enemy and has praised notorious Brooklyn Imam Siraj Wahhaj, an unindicted co-conspirator in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.
Sarsour has also already lashed out against Mamdani signaling he could work with NYPD commissioner Jessica Tisch: “I wasn’t really happy about the news that he was going to keep Tisch on for the NYPD.”
Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and CAIR Action
The Muslim civil rights group has “deep ties to terrorist organizations,” according to Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton, who has demanded an investigation into the nonprofit — which was named as an unindicted co-conspirator in a 2007 terrorist funding case that linked it to Hamas.
Political action committees connected to the group donated more than $140,000 to Mamdani’s PAC.
CAIR Action, led by anti-Israel activist Basim Elkarra (above), helped mobilize the Muslim vote for Mamdani. AP
And CAIR Action, an advocacy group led by former CAIR California executive director Basim Elkarra, helped to mobilize the Muslim vote to steer Mamdani to victory during June’s Democratic primary.
In a 2013 social media post, Elkarra, an anti-Israel activist, supported terrorist Rasmea Yousef Odeh. A military operative with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a terrorist group, Odeh was convicted for the murder of two university students in a Jerusalem supermarket in 1969 and deported from the US in 2017 after lying on her citizenship application.
Democratic Socialists of America
Mamdani has been a member of the DSA since 2017. The radical group’s leadership, whose backing was instrumental in the rise of New York City Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in 2018, unendorsed her last year because they felt she was not sufficiently critical of Israel.
Its international wing has called for lifting travel restrictions on North Korea and condemned President Trump’s brokered ceasefire in Gaza last month.
Mamdani is a member of the Democratic Socialists of America — which unendorsed far-left Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez last year because she was not sufficiently critical of Israel. Stephen Yang for the New York Post
“A conditional ceasefire agreement does not wash the hands of the ruling class that touted their legal obligation to intervene and instead, continued to fuel and arm genocide while stoking regional war,” the group says on its website.
As The Post reported in August, key proposals spelled out in the NYC-DSA’s agenda include calls for the decriminalization of all drugs, sex work and petty crimes, such as trespassing, disorderly conduct and fare jumping.
At the time, Mamdani’s campaign said on background that the NYPD will enforce all misdemeanor crimes if he’s elected, but refused to respond on other issues.
United Federation of Teachers
The sprawling union, representing some 200,000 education workers, endorsed Mamdani for mayor in July — and received pushback from a group representing Jewish teachers and NYC Public Schools Alliance, who are battling antisemitism in city schools.
In exchange for an endorsement from the United Federation of Teachers, Zohran Mamdani vowed to back a controversial measure to hire 1,000 new teachers per year. Matthew McDermott
Mamdani appeared alongside union leadership last month, pledging $12 million to hire 1,000 new teachers a year and providing $12,000 in tuition assistance to prospective teachers in exchange for a commitment to work in the city’s schools for three years.
The increase in teachers is necessary after the union backed a controversial state law to reduce class sizes by the 2027-28 school year.
Working Families Party
When Mamdani voted for himself Tuesday, it was not as a Democrat but on the Working Families Party ballot line. The party endorsed him in March, giving an important boost to the campaign.
The Working Families Party, which was supported by progressive billionaires Alex Soros (left) and his father George Soros, was the first to endorse Mamdani for mayor of New York City. Alexander Soros/Facebook
Despite Mamdani’s rhetoric against billionaires, progressive billionaire George Soros indirectly donated $37 million to the Working Families Party and nine other leftwing groups that backed Mamdani’s campaign.
Since 2016, the party has pocketed $23.7 million from Soros through its nonprofit fundraising arm, Working Families Organization Inc.
Mahmood Mamdani
In an interview after he became a New York State Assemblyman in 2021, Mamdani said his parents are responsible for “not simply the person that I am, but the thoughts that I have.” He repeated the sentiment in his victory speech Tuesday, saying, “To my parents, mama and baba: You have made me into the man I am today.”
Zohran Mamdani owes many of his radical socialist theories and views on Israel to his father, Mahmood Mamdani (left). AP
Many of his anti-Israel and socialist views have their roots in his father Mahmood Mamdani’s scholarship.
A radical socialist and emeritus professor at Columbia University’s Department of Anthropology, Mahmood in 1981 founded the Uganda-Korea Friendship Society, a group connected to North Korea. In his 2020 book “Neither Settler Nor Native,” an academic treatise on settler colonialism around the world, he argues that “Zionist settlers in Israel forcibly exiled and concentrated non-Jews, an ongoing process.”
The elder Mamdani also occupies an advisory position on the Gaza Tribunal, an international group calling for “Israeli perpetrators and Western enablers” to face consequences over their actions in the Gaza Strip.
Patrick Gaspard
The Democratic operative is a former executive for the Democratic National Committee and was also former president of Soros’ Open Society Foundations. An informal advisor to Mamdani’s campaign, he introduced the mayor-elect to some of New York City’s biggest power players.
Democratic Party operative and former US ambassador to South Africa Patrick Gaspard has been informally advising Zohran Mamdani. He is also virulently anti-Trump. Christopher Sadowski
And he has been instrumental in helping choose Mamdani’s transition team — including co-chair Lina Khan, the controversial former head of the Federal Trade Commission.
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The former leader of the Center for American Progress — a progressive think tank — Gaspard is also virulently anti-Trump. After polls closed in the mayoral election Tuesday, he posted on X: “Tonight Dems from the center to the left will beat back the Trump authoritarian movement that’s bankrupting the US . . .”
In his victory speech, Mamdani taunted President Trump, telling him to “Turn the volume up.”
M group with ‘deep’ terrorist ties huge backer of Mamdani campaign: documents
By
Published Nov. 4, 2025, 6:14 p.m. ET
A Muslim civil rights group that federal lawmakers described as having “deep ties to terrorist organizations,” has emerged as one of the biggest single backers to Zohran Mamdani’s mayoral campaign, according to public records.
The Unity and Justice Fund political action committee, which gave the Democratic Socialist frontrunner $120,000 is linked to the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the largest Muslim nonprofit in the US, campaign filings show.
The Unity and Justice PAC, which has offices in Sacramento and Washington, shares addresses and personnel with CAIR Action, according to the Federal Election Commission and Open Secrets, a government transparency group that tracks money in politics.
CAIR’s leaders denied they have any organizational ties to the other groups to The Post Tuesday, but declined to comment further.
Another PAC linked to the California chapter of CAIR — Unity Lab PAC — gave $23,500 to Mamdani’s PAC on September 16, according to campaign finance filings.
Unity Lab lists Tasneem Manjra as its president. Manjra is also listed as the communications contact for the Sacramento chapter of CAIR.
Meanwhile, the Unity and Justice Fund PAC is run by Basim Elkarra, the former longtime executive director of CAIR California, and the treasurer of CAIR Action, which mobilizes Muslim voters across the country.
Radical anti-Israel activist Linda Sarsour said that CAIR and its PACs have been the biggest institutional support of Mamdani’s campaign. AP
It shares its Washington, DC, address with CAIR Foundation, the nonprofit’s national office.
The Post has reached out to Manjra and Elkarra for comment.
CAIR Action was instrumental in mobilizing Muslim voters to back Mamdani, according to radical anti-Israel activist Linda Sarsour, who has been described as a mentor to the Democratic Socialist candidate.
“Once November 4th comes around, I will tell the story. The story is not just that it’s random that Zohran ascended to this place, it is our Muslim-American community,” Sarsour said in a speech at CAIR’s 2025 Leadership & Policy Conference last month.
Federal agents raided offices of the Holy Land Foundation nonprofit across the country in 2004. Leaders of the group were convicted of providing material support to a foreign terrorist organization as well as money laundering and tax fraud. Said Elatab/Middle East Photo
“And I’ll also say that it’s Muslim money. PACs that have supported Zohran, or a particular PAC that has supported Zohran is probably over 80% of Muslim-American donors in this country,” she said.
A spokesman for CAIR noted that CAIR Action corrected Sarsour’s statement after her speech at the conference to add a “legal disclaimer to protect CAIR,” insisting that Unity and Justice was only endorsed by CAIR and not part of the nonprofit.
Elkarra, who is listed as the Sacramento-based treasurer of the PAC, has promoted the Boycott, Divest, Sanctions (BDS) movement and compared Israel to apartheid South Africa, according to a report by Canary Mission.
CAIR California is the largest chapter of the Muslim civil rights group, raking in more than $17 million in donations in 2023, according to its latest available federal filings. The group did not respond to The Post’s request for comment.
Basim Elkarra, a longtime former chair of CAIR California, is also the treasurer of the group’s Unity and Justice PAC, which donated $120,000 to Mamdani’s PAC. AP
Manjra is a member of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) USA board, according to social media posts. Earlier this year, president Trump yanked federal funding for UNRWA after Israel accused some of its members of involvement in the October 7, 2023 attacks.
Last year, Manjra, an adult Girl Scout Troop leader, threatened to stop selling Girl Scout cookies unless the leaders of the organization backtracked on their condemnation of a Missouri troop that was selling handmade bracelets to raise money for children in Gaza.
Lawmakers have called for investigations into CAIR’s alleged terrorist connections. Arkansas senator Tom Cotton and New York Rep Elise Stefanik sent a letter to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent last month, urging the department to investigate CAIR’s alleged links to the Hamas terrorist group.
New York Republican Rep. Elise Stefanik has called for a federal investigation of CAIR. Hans Pennink for the NY Post
In the letter, the lawmakers highlighted a 2008 “terrorism financing trial” where the Holy Land Foundation of Relief and Development and five of its leaders were found guilty of “providing material support to Hamas,” according to reports.
Stefanik and Cotton wrote that CAIR was named as “an unindicted co-conspirator” during the trial and that “evidence showed direct financial interactions between CAIR and the now-defunct Hamas-linked charity.”
In 2017, Mamdani praised the directors of the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development — known as “the Holy Land Five” — in a rap song called “Salaam,” which the Queens Assemblyman said is about growing up Muslim in New York.
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The song, performed under his rap moniker Mr. Cardamon, includes the lyrics: “My love to the Holy Land Five. You better look ’em up.”
In August, Cotton wrote to IRS Commissioner Billy Long, calling on him to strip CAIR’s tax-exempt status because of its “deep ties to terrorist organizations.”
“CAIR’s deep ties to terrorist groups…should prevent them from maintaining nonprofit status, Cotton said. “The status is a privilege not a right.”
Antisemitic activist Linda Sarsour vows to hold Mamdani accountable on campaign promises — boasts Hamas-tied nonprofit fueled rise
Published Nov. 3, 2025
Updated Nov. 3, 2025, 5:22 p.m. ET
Antisemitic activist Linda Sarsour vowed to make sure Zohran Mamdani doesn’t backtrack on his radical campaign policies if he is elected mayor – and boasted that she and a Hamas-linked nonprofit helped fuel his rise.
Sarsour, a political mentor and close friend of the silver-spoon socialist, denied she would work for a potential Mamdani administration but promised she would still do whatever it takes to hold him “accountable” — boldly declaring that she won’t let him “do whatever the hell he wants when he gets to City Hall.”
“I just want you all to know I’m not going to work for the Zohran administration,” Sarsour said in an Instagram livestream late Saturday, which was viewed by Fox News.
A member of the Democratic Socialists of America, along with Mamdani, Sarsour has been like a political mentor to Mamdani, according to reports. Linda Sarsour/ Instagram
“I’m not going to work in City Hall, because, guess what? There gotta be people like me willing to stay outside,” she said.
“Our friends on the inside need people on the outside to hold them accountable. To say, ‘We see you. We’re paying attention’,” she added.
In a clip from a different Sarsour speech that circulated Monday, the Hamas-supporting, Palestinian-American firebrand hinted that she would spill the beans about Mamdani’s rapid political ascent — and the flood of cash from the Council on American-Islamic Relations behind it — after Election Day.
“Once November 4th comes around, I will tell the story. The story is not just that it’s random that Zohran ascended to this place, it is our Muslim-American community,” she said while speaking at CAIR’s 2025 Leadership & Policy Conference last month.
Linda Sarsour said she will “hold Zohran accountable” to fulfill campaign promises, including dismantling an NYPD unit that polices terrorism threats, protests, and riots, if he wins the race. MediaNews Group via Getty Images
“And I’ll also say that it’s Muslim money. PACs that have supported Zohran, or a particular PAC that has supported Zohran is probably over 80% of Muslim-American donors in this country,” she said.
CAIR, which describes itself as a Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization, is currently under scrutiny by Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) and Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), who have pushed Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent to investigate claims the nonprofit is bankrolled by Hamas. The nonprofit was allegedly provided “seed money” by the terror group, according to evidence presented in a congressional hearing.
Sarsour went on to identify the CAIR-funded Unity and Justice Fund PAC as “the largest institutional donor to the pro-Zohran super PAC in New York.”
According to public records, the Unity and Justice PAC gave $120,000 total to Lower Costs, an NYC-based pro-Mamdani PAC, out of about $3 million in donations this cycle.
Sarsour, 45, an activist who is a member of the Democratic Socialists of America alongside Mamdani, insisted that her posse would speak out if the Democratic nominee and front-runner in the heated race didn’t follow through with his Marxist promises.
“When he does something when he’s in City Hall and he’s wrong, I’m going to tell him he’s wrong,”
“Our friends on the inside need people on the outside to hold them accountable. To say, ‘We see you. We’re paying attention,” Sarsour continued. James Keivom
“Voting for Zohran is not, ‘We’re going to vote for Zohran and just let him do whatever the hell he wants when he gets to City Hall.’ Our job as a movement is we have to hold whoever goes to City Hall accountable.”
Sarsour even got a head start inserting herself in City Hall affairs, dumping on Mamdani’s suggestion that he would keep NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch on, if he is elected.
“I wasn’t really happy about the news that he was going to keep Tisch on for the NYPD,” she railed.
“What’s most important is that in New York City, the police commissioner works for the mayor. They are not a separate elected official. So that means if Zohran says to Tisch, ‘You gotta do A-B-C,’ Tisch gotta do what the mayor says,” Sarsour continued.
“Now, if she doesn’t do that and goes against the mayor, then that’s when we’re going to have to go to Zohran and be like, ‘You definitely made the wrong decision here. What are you going to do to hold your police commissioner accountable to the plan?’”
Sarsour also signaled Mamdani would owe her and other supporters if he wins.
“When Zohran gets inaugurated in January, and as we move forward with this mayor, we have to be the people outside,” she said.
“Zohran is going to have to tell his own critics that are on the other side to basically say, ‘Look out that window, those people outside, these constituents, these activists, these organizers that are outside, I’m accountable to them, because they’re the ones that helped me get there.’”
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Sarsour is believed to be among those who have helped shape the Queens assemblyman’s radical views, as well as his far-left hatred of Israel, according to a foreign intelligence report and critics.
Sarsour has a history of spewing contempt for the Jewish state – long before the Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas terror attack.
She declared in 2018 that fellow Muslims shouldn’t humanize Israelis because they’re the enemy.
Sarsour also previously spoke glowingly of notorious Brooklyn Imam Siraj Wahhaj, an unindicted co-conspirator in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing who Mamdani posed for a smiley photo with while on the campaign trail.
Forget about Mamdani’s illegal donors — his legal ones are even worse
By
Post Editorial Board
Published Oct. 14, 2025, 8:54 p.m. ET
New York City Democratic mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani speaks at a campaign rally in New York on Monday, Oct. 13, 2025. AP
The $13,000 that Zohran Mamdani seems to have accepted in illegal donations from foreigners isn’t as sketchy as some of the legal money his campaign has taken in.
When you combine Mamdani’s two obsessions — socialism now! and the elimination of Israel — with deep-pocketed political donors you wind up with a toxic pool of reprehensible characters.
For starters, let’s play two-degrees-of-separation between the campaign and the Chinese Communist Party.
Relatives of China-based billionaire Neville Roy Singham — who funded multiple radical anti-Israel and Marxist groups linked to the Los Angeles riots and Columbia University protests — have contributed thousands of dollars to Mamdani.
Alicia Goodwin, Singham’s niece, is a Mamdani donor as well as a prominent far-left activist in New York City. She founded “Jews for Zohran,” much like “Chickens for Col. Sanders.”
Omer Hasan and Mohammad Javed — who each gave a cool quarter million to a Mamdani-supporting PAC — made their dough as executives for tech firm AppLovin, which short-selling firm Culper Research alleges is a national-security risk because Chinese national Hao Tang controls nearly 10% of the company.
Then there’s Zohran’s Islamist fans.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations, via its “Unity & Justice Fund,” directed a full $100,000 into Mamdani campaign coffers.
CAIR was named as an unindicted co-conspirator in the notorious 2007 Holy Land Foundation terrorism financing trial; five Holy Land Foundation leaders were convicted of giving Hamas more than $12 million, and were sentenced to decades in prison.
In a 2017 song, Mamdani rapped “My love to the Holy Land Five/You better look ’em up.”
So, a year before the likely next mayor of New York was naturalized as a citizen he was (literally!) singing the praises of convicted Hamas supporters.
Meanwhile, five staffers of the Islamic Circle of North America gave $1,300 in individual contributions to Mamdani’s campaign.
The ICNA is the North American branch of Jamaat-e-Islami, a South Asian Islamist group tied to the Muslim Brotherhood and banned in India and Russia as a terrorist organization.
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Former New York City ICNA head Ashrafuzzaman Khan was sentenced to death in absentia for his role in the torture and murder of 18 Bangladeshi intellectuals.
Mamdani is no Manchurian Candidate: A proud socialist and an open Israel-hater, he’s telling us forthrightly what he stands for.
Bad enough that many New Yorkers like what they hear; worse that even more just stick their heads in the sand about it.